POLITICS/ELECTIONS/CORRUPTION

The depositions given by former British spy Christopher Steele and a longtime associate of John McCain must be unsealed, a federal judge said Thursday.

U.S. District Court Judge Ursula Ungaro overruled the objections of both Steele and David Kramer to make the depositions public. The pair gave testimony in a lawsuit brought against BuzzFeed in December 2018 by a Russian Internet entrepreneur.

The businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, was referenced in the infamous dossier compiled by Steele about President Trump’s alleged connections to Russia. Gubarev objected to BuzzFeed’s publishing of the dossier in January 2017, which accused him of using his companies to hack into computers owned by the Democratic National Committee.

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The depositions could be released as soon as March 14.

Elliott Abrams has had a difficult month. Two weeks ago, the Reagan-Administration crony had to sit through a public interrogation at the hands of newly elected Somali Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who, referring to Abrams' involvement in the the Iran-Contra scandal, asked "Why should we trust you?"

He fumbled his way through that one, and was only saved by the media, who predictably accused Rep. Omar an anti-semitism. Clearly she was on to something.

And now a further humiliation. Earlier this week, Russian UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia called out Abrams in front of the UN General Assembly, noting that in the 1980s Abrams had schemed to smuggle arms to Nicaraguan death-squads disguised as 'humanitarian aid,' and that this was exactly what he was doing again with the current humanitarian aid.

The DOJ has announced that they are reopening their investigation into the light sentencing of Jeffrey Epstein on Child-Sex-Trafficking convictions. This is potentially bad news for the Clintons and the Clinton Foundation. However, they might be a danger for the President as well.

This law is a rabbit hole our country does not need to go down. Since when do American citizens have to pledge to act in the interest of a foreign power in order to do business with their own government? Since when does the state of Arkansas punish its own taxpayers in an effort to assist a foreign government with its domestic policy?

As an American, I say it is none of their damn business what political beliefs we hold. We’ll see them in court.

Americans for Peace Now (APN) on Wednesday launched a petition calling on American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) to “condemn and disinvite” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from its March conference.

The petition was launched the day before Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced his intention to indict the prime minister for bribery, pending a hearing. It kicked off on the heels of Netanyahu’s decision to publicly go to bat for the extremist Otzma Yehudit Party.

Bill DeBlasio's wife Chirlane McCray cannot explain where $850million given to the mental health program she champions has gone, according to reports.

In the three years it has been running, organizers at ThriveNYC have largely failed to keep records of the initiative's achievements - and data that has been collected shows it lagging well behind targets.

Despite that, the program has been granted an even bigger budget going forward and is now on track to spend $1billion over five years.

The political scene is split in their response following the attorney general's announcement to seek the prime minister's indictment on bribery charges; While the left-wing leaders urge Netanyahu to quit his post, those on the right express their support ahead of April elections.

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit on Thursday called for Prime Minister Netanyahu to face charges in all three of the open corruption investigations into his actitvities, hours after the High Court rejected a last-ditch attempt by the Likud party to scupper his recommendations until after the April 9 elections. The indictments recommended by Mandelblit will be subject to a hearing beforehand.

Cohen ended his closing remarks by saying, “I pray the country doesn’t make the same mistakes that I have made or pay the heavy price that my family and I are paying.”

Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer, is prepared to depict his former boss as a liar and possible criminal who manipulated his financial statements and frequently made racist remarks. Cohen is testifying in an open session of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.

Israel is tough on its leaders. It is certainly tougher than Britain that has so far failed to charge Tony Blair with war crimes or the USA that similarly failed to indict George Bush for launching an illegal war*. Yet Israel is far from an ethical realm. It is institutionally racist towards the indigenous people of the land as well as African immigrants, and it is also abusive to its poor. Israel is occasionally accused of gross war crimes. One may wonder why a criminal state with such an appalling record is so harsh with its leaders.

CNN has been accused of ambushing Bernie Sanders and tricking viewers by passing off Democratic political operatives as everyday people during a Monday evening town hall as part of his campaign for the 2020 election. Internet sleuths looked into the backgrounds of those asking Sanders various questions - most of which could be considered fair game to ask a presidential candidate, only to find that there was more than meets the eye as noted by Paste Magazine.

For example, Sanders was asked a tough question about allegations of sexual harassment on his 2016 campaign by "American University Student" Shadi Nasab. What CNN didn't mention is that she's also an intern for a large D.C. lobbying firm, Cassidy & Associates.

Powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC won applause this week for a tweet, but in reality sidestepped the racism controversy enveloping Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud Party.

On 22 February AIPAC followed up an American Jewish Committee (AJC) tweet by tweeting in turn: “We agree with AJC. AIPAC has a longstanding policy not to meet with members of this racist and reprehensible party.”

House Democrats are opening an investigation into what they say are abuses of power by President Donald Trump through his attacks on the courts, the Justice Department, the FBI and the media, according to a House official familiar with the plans.

Topics for the inquiry will include Trump’s public humiliation of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, his attacks on actions by the liberal Ninth Circuit Court and his abuse of reporters as “dishonest” and “enemies of the people,” said the person, who asked for anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Webmaster's Commentary:

At the risk of stating the obvious, all of Trump's opinions are protected under the First Amendment.

We’ve long said that without identity politics, the Democratic Party would have no reason to exist at all. Or, if there was a reason, it would not be one sufficiently energizing to actually persuade anyone to vote for them.

Democrats have mastered the art of dividing Americans into every conceivable special interest group, ethnicity, religion, and handicap they can dream up. If they’re not catering to blacks, they’re catering to transgenders. If it’s not transgenders, it’s Muslims. If it’s not Muslims, it’s someone else. Their entire business model is increasingly based on a foundation of identifying a group, telling that group that THEY are behind them, and then turning that group against the real enemy: White, straight Republican men.

Reps. Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows have referred Michael Cohen to the Department of Justice for alleged perjury during his hearing before the House Oversight Committee this week.

The two Republican lawmakers penned a letter to Attorney General William Barr Thursday claiming the former lawyer for the President had “willfully and intentionally” made false statements before the committee.

“We write to refer significant evidence that Michael D. Cohen committed perjury and knowingly made false statements during his testimony before an Oversight and Reform Committee hearing,” they wrote.

H.R.8, known as the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019, passed the US House of Representatives. The bill passed the chamber of Congress by a vote of 240 to 190. News media outlets like CNN claim that the bill passed with bipartisan support. Looking at the breakdown of the vote, the proposed law did not enjoy as much bipartisan support as CNN claimed. The bill will now move to the Senate where it most likely will be dead on arrival. The Republicans hold the majority in the Senate, and it would take a super majority of 60 to advance the bill to President Trump's desk.

Breitbart reports, “Andrew McCabe, the disgraced former acting FBI director, conceded in his new book that James Comey’s infamous decision to hold a press conference to announce no charges against Hillary Clinton in her email case worked to ‘erode the credibility of the FBI.’”

Andrew McCabe was fired from his post as Deputy Director of the FBI by President Trump after it was revealed that he had lied to the Justice Department multiple times.

He had previously been criticized for mishandling the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server, with some evidence even suggesting that he had been working on an “insurance policy” with other members of the FBI in the event that Trump actually won the 2016 election.

However, while McCabe has multiple problems of his own, his revelation that Comey’s actions in the decision to not charge Hillary Clinton or anyone on her team with mishandling classified information ruins Comey’s reputation.

As UBS calculates, the realized net payments to households are now running below the bank's forecast, with the cumulative shortfall rising to a whopping $45.5bln, an amount which could have significant adverse implications on Americans' spending habits if most taxpayers had expected their 2019 refund to be similar to 2018.

Since 1950, in fact, a whopping 97.8 percent of mass public shootings, or 98 percent rounded up, took place in areas where signs had been posted indicating that guns were not allowed there. Whether spelled out or designated with a giant red strikethrough symbol over a handgun, the messaging was clear in almost every instance: guns are prohibited in this area, so you’re not allowed to shoot anyone here.

Currently, in NYC, it is all but impossible for a citizen to legally own any kind of gun, and gun ordinances (administered by a bloated and corrupt bureaucracy) are so voluminous and poorly-written that for even legal gun-owners to avoid violations is impossible. Of course, that’s the way Democrats want it.

How far the international community’s approach towards Israel has reversed trajectory over the past half century can be gauged simply by studying the fate of one word: Zionism.

In 1975 much of the world broke ranks with the United States and Europe at the United Nations general assembly to declare that Zionism, Israel’s founding ideology, “is a form of racism and racial discrimination”.

Western publics were generally shocked. Zionism, they had been told, was a necessary liberation movement for the Jewish people after centuries of oppression and pogroms. Its creation, Israel, was simply the righting of terrible wrongs that had culminated in the horrors of the Holocaust.

But Zionism looked very different to those countries around the globe that had been exposed to centuries of European colonialism and the more recent advent of US imperialism.

Gloria Steinem said on NBC’s “Today” Tuesday that pro-life activists were using tactics similar to Adolf Hitler. The 84-year-old feminist icon made a Nazi reference to Donald Trump and his anti-abortion supporters.

“Another is why Hitler was actually elected — and he was elected — and he campaigned against abortion. That was he padlocked the family planning clinics, OK, so that is still relevant in terms of the right-wing,” Steinem said.

There was nothing to contrast because, as far as I can tell, CNN doesn’t feature a single story on their website regarding the Democratic Party blocking of Sasse’s Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have saved newborn babies who survive abortion attempts from negligent homicide.

CNN didn’t even bother producing one of those predictably prejudiced pieces, like the ones we saw in Politico or the Washington Post yesterday, mischaracterizing Sasse’s bill as “anti-abortion.” They didn’t bother with the “conservatives pounce!” stories, like the Daily Beast or Vox did. They didn’t bother, like so many others, to distract from the number of viable babies being aborted by stressing only 1.5 percent of the procedures are post-20 weeks’ gestation, rather than pointing out there are somewhere around 15,000 to 18,000 aborted every year. They just ignored it.

Former Canadian Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould gave a bombshell testimony accusing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other officials of “veiled threats” to force her to drop a case for political purposes.

Ms Wilson-Raybould gave testimony before the Canadian House of Commons justice committee for several hours on Wednesday, speaking out against members of staff and Prime Minister Trudeau attempting to interfere with an investigation into the SNC-Lavalin corporation, The Globe and Mail reports.

Accusations that the prime minister and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) interfered with the SNC-Lavalin investigation first emerged on February 7th.

Former Vice President Joe Biden said Tuesday his family voted in support of another run for president in 2020.

“From being pushed, prodded by my son Hunter, and my wife Jill, and my daughter, we just had a family meeting with all the grandkids too, and there is a consensus that they, the most important people in my life, want me to run,” Biden said.

Biden discussed a possible run for president during a four-hour conversation with historian Jon Meacham on Wednesday. He said that his children and grandchildren were not “naive” about facing public campaign scrutiny.

Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen was hit with a criminal referral for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) following a heated exchange during Cohen's Wednesday testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee.

Meadows pressed Cohen over his apparent failure to list contracts with foreign companies that paid him for access to the Trump administration, including Novartis, which paid Cohen $1.2 million to act as a consultant on the Trump administration, as well as $150,000 from South Korea's Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) and a payment from Kazakhstan BTA bank.

Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen appeared before Congress on Wednesday to give testimony related to alleged “collusion” between Trump and Russia — but the hearing quickly descended into a partisan political "circus".

The hearing had barely begun before Republican congressman Mark Meadows tried to put a stop to it, announcing in a “point of order” that it should be postponed because Cohen’s prepared testimony was not handed over 24 hours in advance. Lawmakers were upset that media got the testimony before them.

The Associated Press sent out two versions of a story on responses to Ilhan Omar’s comments regarding the Israel lobby. Both were entitled “Omar’s edgy Israel tweet no surprise to some back home.” One version was slanted; the other made that one look good.

As we’ll see below, such distortion on Israel-Palestine isn’t unusual for AP.

In response to an email I sent complaining that NPR had aired a one-sided, slanted report on the Ilhan Omar controversy, reporter Susan Davis replied that their coverage was “fair.” She emailed that the controversy was Omar’s fault, calling it “a self-inflicted PR mess by a sitting member of Congress.”

The report had been aired on NPR’s All Things Considered program, reportedly “the most listened-to, afternoon drive-time, news radio program in the country.”

Let’s look at what constituted Omar’s alleged “self-inflicted PR mess”: she mentioned the influence of a special interest lobby on politicians’ stances.

This is a widely understood reality. Politicians and others frequently discuss the influence of the NRA, the pharmaceutical lobby, and other special interest groups. Democrats periodically call out conservative lobbies; Republicans do the same for liberal ones. This is considered politics as usual.

A number of states recently passed laws that require state contractors — including teachers, lawyers, newspapers and journalists, and even students who want to judge high school debate tournaments — to certify that they are not participating in politically motivated boycotts against Israel. Dozens of states have considered such “anti-BDS” laws, and a bipartisan group of 73 senators recently passed a bill — the Combating BDS Act — that would encourage states to adopt such laws.

The ACLU takes no position on boycotts of Israel or any foreign country, but we have long defended the right to boycott, which is protected under the First Amendment. That’s why we challenged anti-boycott laws in Kansas, Arizona, Arkansas, and Texas, and strongly opposed the Combating BDS Act in Congress.

"Though we said at the beginning of the Town Hall that the audience was made up of Democrats and Independents, we should have more fully identified any political affiliations," the cable news network said in a statement.

Paste first pointed out at least four attendees have deep roots in the D.C. lobby and Democratic Party, including Tara Ebersole, who asked about Sanders' universal healthcare plan.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer introduced her as a "former biology professor" but her LinkedIn page claims she currently works as chair of the Baltimore County Democratic Party.

Now, this is kind of a funny story. There’s a column here at PJ Media by Megan Fox. And the headline of this: “Reparations Time? Kamala Harris’ Father Says Family Descended from a Jamaican Slave Owner.” Now, this is perfect because this points out the sheer hypocrisy and I think the genuine mental deficiencies of people we’re told are brilliant on the left.

Kamala Harris made some joke — the subject of whether she’s black enough came up, as it always does in Democrat presidential politics. Is she black enough? And then some black civil rights leader — and I wish I could remember who — I don’t remember who it was. But said of Kamala Harris, she got a white husband. This ain’t flying. She can’t get away, she can’t run as an African-American, she can’t run as a black. She’s married to a white guy. That doesn’t work for us.

Three months after Israeli police recommended that the country's attorney general pursue charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his alleged involvement in "Bezeq Walla Affair", it appears an indictment is finally being handed down on Thursday, much to the longtime leader's chagrin.

The influence of America’s evangelical churches has been in steep decline ever since the two administrations of professed evangelical Christian President George W. Bush at the beginning of this century. Again and again on my radio talk show and in this column, I tried to warn Christians about the way the Bush presidency was distorting Christ’s teaching and how millions of our countrymen were being turned off to Christianity as a result. For the most part, of course, my appeals fell on deaf ears. But I Pollyannaishly thought we had seen the worst of it with Bush. Boy was I wrong! Donald Trump has taken up where Bush left off—in spades.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also supports reparations for African-Americans whose ancestors were slaves. Warren (above right) even broadened the reparations scope to include the descendants of Native-Americans whom European settlers displaced.

Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro (D), another presidential hopeful, recently told The Root that the country “would be better off” if the government made reparations to African-Americans.

Former attorney Michael Cohen — due to report to prison in early May — had his truthfulness severely questioned on Wednesday as he testified against President Donald Trump, whom he once represented.

The House Oversight and Reform Committee called on Cohen to testify as part of its investigations into the president.

Cohen had previously worked as a personal lawyer for Trump for nearly a decade. He has been cooperating with federal investigators and admitted to many crimes since turning himself into authorities in August 2018.

Cohen claimed that he committed many crimes to protect the president. In his opening statement, he accused the president of a list of unethical behaviors, such as using the presidency to enrich himself.

Republicans on the committee questioned why they should believe an admitted liar, as Cohen has already pleaded guilty to lying to Congress.

An heir to the Gambino crime family has issued a stark warning to Michael Cohen, predicting that President Donald Trump's former personal attorney may face retaliation behind bars over his Congressional testimony.

In a document entitled Trump’s Middle East Marshall Plan with the subtitle (White Paper by Tom Barrack), dated March 10, 2017, Tom Barrack who was born in Lebanon myopically states:

"A revised economic blueprint and vision is a major component of any Middle East Peace Initiative for Israel, Palestine, and the broader Middle East. In fact, there is no Middle East. There are only tribes, flags and local loyalties which seldom corroborate on religion, geography, language, and political systems."...

I gather I was supposed to gasp when Michael Cohen said during his testimony before Congress on Wednesday, “The president of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws.”
If that’s the best he’s got, Trump should demand we hold the election this coming Tuesday.

Press claimed North Korea deal would be to distract from Cohen
The press, enemy of the people, made a deal impossible
Press influence is malign…or malignant
ANY deal would have been MSM-framed as a coverup failure
Chairman Kim is going home with improving relations
Time is on President Trump’s side
Walking away early…but politely, respectfully
Michael Cohen testimony, hours and hours of claims
Reporters don’t understand finance
Cohen was hired and worked 10 years for citizen Trump
There wasn’t ANY evidence President Trump was racist…
…till Charlottesville? Does that sound likely?
President has been painted as hands-off, doesn’t read key reports,
How can lead us? NO clue what’s happening!
Therefore, Dems claimed…we MUST impeach!
NOW he’s being painted as 100% hands-on, knows everything
He is aware of every single meeting, involved, aware of ALL!

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was notified Thursday that the attorney general plans to put him on trial for bribery and fraud, following a two-year corruption investigation that has galvanized a serious election challenge and could speed the end of his political career.

The draft indictment, while expected, sent tremors through Israel’s political landscape, coming just 40 days before what’s shaping up to be a closely fought election. It’s the first time a sitting Israeli leader has ever come so near to criminal charges.

It seems that there is not much left of the Left and what remains has nothing to do with ‘Left.’

Contemporary ‘Left’ politics is detached from its natural constituency, working people. The so called ‘Left’ is basically a symbolic identifier for ‘Guardian readers’ a critical expression attributed to middle class people who, for some reason, claim to know what is good for the working class. How did this happen to the Left? Why was it derailed and by whom?

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) concluded the House Oversight Committee's questioning of President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer Michael Cohen by delivering a call to "keep democracy intact" and a return to normalcy in the political arena.

In his opening statement under oath to the U.S. Congress, convicted liar and disgraced and disbarred Attorney Michael Cohen’s accusations against Trump were a rehash of old news like Stormy Daniels being paid hush money, or the meeting in Trump Tower with Russian Attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya.

Cohen testified that Trump directed him to send a letter to the high school and colleges Trump attended instructing them to never release his grades or records without his consent. The Dems must hate that Obama did the same thing.

He also made several accusations that can’t be corroborated, like how Trump made racist statements to him or the claim that Trump knew about the nothingburger “Trump tower meeting” beforehand. A number of things Cohen mentioned were old Democrat talking points, and the Democrats couldn’t have been nicer.

The FBI, CIA and NSA claim that the DNC emails published by WIKILEAKS on July 26, 2016 were obtained via a Russian hack, but more than three years after the alleged “hack” no forensic evidence has been produced to support that claim. In fact, the available forensic evidence contradicts the official account that blames the leak of the DNC emails on a Russian internet “intrusion”. The existing evidence supports an alternative explanation–the files taken from the DNC between 23 and 25May 2016 and were copied onto a file storage device, such as a thumb drive.

People who have a modern smartphone normally think of 5G as nothing more than a progression from 3G and 4G. Offering fewer dropped calls, faster data transfer, and more convenience. 5G is the fifth generation of wireless technology.

This thinking barely scratches the surface. There must be a greater reason why CEOs of major cellular carriers are breaking their necks to railroad the fastest implementation in history of a new communication standard.

This reason has little to do with your personal cellphone and everything to do with the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) where all electronic devices will be connected together in real-time. Collectively, the IoT is the core technology used to implement Smart City makeovers...

The bottom line to all this is that artificially created rights implemented through government force constitute a violation of natural law, a violation that leads ultimately to tyranny. Worst of all, those who do not believe such a thing to be possible in the United States of America are sure to be caught unprepared. Do not allow yourself to be included in this group of wishful thinkers.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in hot water this week after being accused of making illegal payments to her boyfriend, and one top conservative group is taking action.

The right-leaning Coolidge Reagan Foundation filed a complaint this week with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Ocasio-Cortez’s campaign may have illegally funneled thousands of dollars through a PAC to her boyfriend, Riley Roberts.

Here’s more from Fox News on the complaint and how Ocasio-Cortez appeared to have made the alleged illegal payments:

The Constitution was intended to limit 1) the power of government over the citizenry 2) the power of each branch of government and 3) the power of political/financial elites over the government and the citizenry, as the Founders recognized the intrinsic risks of an all-powerful state, an all-powerful state dominated by one branch of government and the risks of a financial elite corrupting the state to serve the interests above those of the citizenry.

Wednesday on his nationally syndicated radio show, conservative talker Mark Levin set his sights on an ongoing situation in Israel involving the nation’s attorney general Avichai Mandelblit, who reportedly will announce his effort to charge the nation’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

As reported by the Times of Israel, Mandelblit will charge Netanyahu with criminal offenses in three cases, one of which includes bribery.

According to Levin, Netanyahu, who he described as the “Churchill” and “Reagan” of that nation, was being charged for nothing more than accepting champagne and cigars, and for freedom of speech.